Josh's Story
Earth Camp has changed me a lot. Everything in the camp was educational and also enjoyable. This camp taught me many things about nature and how to conserve it and see how crucial protecting it is. Earth Camp had many activities that helped me be aware of the environment. The camp has taught me that growing your own food is a lot more eco-friendly because garden food is more healthy, clean, and delicious than store food and more things to help the world.
Making store food is more hurtful for the environment because it usually has harmful growth hormones, bug sprays, and then was shipped to be processed and packaged to go to the store. Growth hormones make the food grow unnaturally. Then bug sprays were used in the process which kills the insects. Bug sprays usually kill the bugs but birds eat the poisoned insects which kills the birds. Then the food was sent into a factory to be processed and then be packaged. The factory emits green-house gasses which contribute to Global Warming. All of this is from almost every single food product that is in the store.
But all of that can be prevented by just growing your own food. Growing your own food is healthier for you and it is fun and does not include hormones and sprays. Earth Camp has taught all of this to me so I could make a difference into the world and tell other people. I should cut off shopping at the store that much and grow more food.
Also Earth Camp also showed me the consequences of letting invasive species into lakes and streams. They could disrupt the food balance in the ecosystem. They could over populate and eat almost everything in the habitat and sometimes eat all the vegetation. One invasive species that the Earth Camp showed me is the Cray Fish. They over populate and kill all the native species like the trout eggs and fries and plants.
We could all prevent it by fishing the invasive species out like what we did at camp. In Earth Camp, you could catch many with your friends; it was one of my favorite activities. You could literally catch hundreds of Cray Fish to help the habitat and it is also fun too. You could just grab a net and set up some traps to catch them. You could use the Cray Fish as a delicious snack and also can donate your catch to an animal center. That would help the native species to regenerate their population and make their habitat balanced once again.
Then my most favorite experience was the Saguaro harvesting. We went to the desert to pick fruit off of a type cactus called the Saguaro with a stick. We learned that the Native Americans celebrated with the ripening of the fruit because it is a sign of the monsoons are coming after many days without rain. We took down the ripe fruits so we could use the inside of the fruit as delicious syrup. You could also ferment the fruit to make a wine, but you shouldn’t drink that though. You could use the fruit as a small fruit snack. If you are in the desert and found some Saguaro fruit, you could get a stick to poke it off. Earth Camp has been a great fun, educational, social, and inspiring experience.